Fri 13 Nov 2009
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday released new fatality estimates for the H1N1 influenza virus, also known as swine flu. Since the start of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak in April, there have been some 3,900 deaths, more than the 1,200 previously estimated, but significantly less than the 36,000 deaths each year attributed to seasonal flu. In the six months from April to October 17, 2009, the CDC puts the total number of swine flu cases at 22 million and the number of hospitalizations at 98,000. The Wall Street Journal Health blog ponders what these numbers might mean. For starters, it observes that there’s a lot of uncertainty around the figures because so many cases of swine flu go unreported. Indeed, the CDC itself says that estimating the number of individual flu cases in the U.S. is very challenging because many people with flu don’t seek medical […]
Read the rest of this great post here